Where the V.F.W. Is Both Tough and Feminine By MICHAEL D. REGAN Published: February 22, 2013

TONAWANDA, N.Y. — Members of the Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 12097 began a recent meeting in this Buffalo suburb as those at many of the organization’s 7,000 posts do — with a whirl of conversation, a recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance and a prayer. But there was neither beer nor bravado, things members say are often in abundance at other posts — only a paper plate full of chocolate chip cookies prepared by one of the post’s members. The post, officially called the Dorothy Kubik/Katherine Galloway Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 12097, has a membership of 24 women and 8 men. Officials say it is the only current V.F.W. post that was specifically created for women in the military. Its members are concerned mainly with education and health care. Randi K. Law, a spokeswoman at the V.F.W.’s national headquarters, said the post was believed to be the only existing one that “was founded to address the current needs of women veterans.” Of the organization’s 1.6 million members, she added, only 12,130 were women. The nation’s first V.F.W. Post geared toward women was created in Topeka, Kan., in 1995 and lasted six years, officials said. Post 12097’s founder and current adviser, Marlene Roll, 48, who was stationed in Oman as an operating-room technician during Operation Desert Storm, said she hesitantly began the push to form the post in 2010 after ascending through the mostly male hierarchy of the V.F.W., where she saw the difficulties faced by women in the military. “It was an effort to sort of draw them out of the woodwork,” Ms. Roll said. “Women are more detail-oriented, more organized, there’s less drinking. We have those who have been injured, those who have been attacked, maybe sexually attacked. There’s a certain comfort coming in knowing there’s security there. Somebody like that isn’t going to walk into an all-male post. It’s never going to happen. At least now they feel like there’s a go-to place.” (The post is named for two World War II veterans who joined the V.F.W. in 1978, the year the organization began to admit women as members.) Many of the women in the post said in interviews that they would not have joined one that was monopolized by men. And while most contended they still had a deep connection to the bonds of the military at large, they said the same stark contrasts between men and women existed whether on a military base overseas or around the dinner table. At a monthly post meeting on a recent Sunday, 10 women and 1 man gathered in the suburb of Tonawanda at the borrowed space of another veterans’ group. Post 12097 has no permanent location. With a gavel and laptop, the post’s commander, Beth Maddigan, an Army reservist who served with Ms. Roll in Oman, led the meeting. Topics veered from the contents of monthly mail to coming volunteer events for other veterans. The two children of one of the members sat at a table and drew on notebook paper while the group discussed plans for outdoor get-togethers when the weather warmed. “I just need to let my husband know that he’ll be the one cooking,” said Delcey Pulvino, the post’s senior vice commander, to a burst of laughter. A few moments later, as the conversation suddenly shifted to her son entering the Army soon, she teared up, and her comrades rushed to comfort her. Many V.F.W. members from World War II and the Korean War at dozens of posts in western New York are dying, and the organization is searching for ways to bolster membership to reflect the modern military. As soldiers return home after two long wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and with a recent announcement by the Obama administration that it would support women on the front lines of combat — a role that many female military personnel say has been a reality for years — the members of Post 12097 believe that more women and younger veterans may be attracted to the V.F.W. Bob Clark, 67, the post’s junior vice commander, is frequently the only man to attend meetings. After serving in Vietnam and Iraq as a medic, he joined various V.F.W. posts across the country, all of which were made up solely of men. But when his wife and daughter joined Post 12097 in 2010, after separate tours in Iraq, he decided to do so as well. “This is an indication of the changing of the guards,” he said of the post’s predominantly female membership. “It’s a gradual maturation process of the military. There’s young families starting out in the V.F.W. just as they did after World War II. We’ve turned full circle.” Ms. Law, the national spokeswoman, said that while membership numbers were being sustained, as Vietnam veterans take the place of members of the World War II and Korean War eras, the organization will now turn to the country’s younger military personnel, many of whom are women, to fill in the gaps. “Women are joining, and they’re joining at a rapid pace,” Ms. Law said. “And that’s something the V.F.W. needs.” A version of this article appeared in print on February 23, 2013, on page A15 of the New York edition with the headline: Where the V.F.W. Is Both Tough and Feminine.

The former Army reservist joined the Veterans of Foreign Wars in 1991 shortly after returning from a deployment in the Middle East during the Gulf War. She quickly found that attracting fellow female military veterans to the male-dominated VFW was no easy task.

As Roll rose through the VFW ranks, and post after post asked her for advice on attracting female members, she decided a different approach was needed.

“I thought the only way to bring them in was give them a post of their own,” says Roll, chief of staff for New York state’s VFW and female vets chairwoman for the national VFW.

So Roll organized what has become the nation’s only VFW post targeting the needs of women.

Men wear their military backgrounds literally on their sleeves — jackets or hats showing their veteran statuses, Roll says.

“Not in the female world. A lot of them didn’t even know they were veterans and eligible for the VFW,” says Roll, 46, of Alden, N.Y. “A lot of them shifted gears when they came back — ‘I’m a mom, I’m a businesswoman.”

The VFW has a membership of 1.6 million, with most typically being men ages 60 and up, says Jerry Newberry, VFW director of communications.

Most of the VFW’s 7,500 posts are filled with retired men, so “their needs and issues are a lot different than the new veteran of a foreign war,” says Renee DeRouche, 46, of Orchard Park, N.Y., and commander of VFW Post 12097.

“Our age range for our post is late 20s to mid-40s for the most part,” says DeRouche, who has spent 27 years full- and part-time in the U.S. Army, Army Reserves and National Guard, including time in the Middle East as part of Operation Desert Storm and Operation Iraqi Freedom. “Everybody’s still working. Some of them have little kids. So the needs become a little different.”

Thirty-four women and eight men were charter members of VFW Post 12097, launched last July. Today it has 49 members, 40 of them women.

Schreck joined the post after his wife, Leonora, who was injured in Iraq while in the Army, became interested in joining.

The post meets once a month in another VFW post’s hall in suburban Buffalo. Its aim, members say, is to serve both as a social setting for female and male veterans and as an advocate for their particular needs.

“A lot of female veterans coming out (of service) don’t realize they have access to the VA (Veterans Affairs Department),” says former Army reservist Debra Post, 48, of Holland, N.Y. “We provide the information for them and where to go.”

With post members young enough to still be deployed overseas, it hopes to provide support to family members left behind, DeRouche said.

The Buffalo post is the second one started by women. The first was founded in 1995 in Topeka by female National Guard members who served in the Persian Gulf during the Gulf War. The post is now defunct, but lasted about six years, says Darrell Bencken, former Kansas state quartermaster.

“I think people moved, they got out of the Guard, and and there just wasn’t enough to maintain it,” says Bencken, of Topeka. “But it lasted, it wasn’t a flash in the pan.”

As of January, 25,000 women were deployed supporting military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq. Since the U.S. went began Iraqi and Afghanistan operations, 260,000 women have been deployed in support of those operations, Lainez says.

The VFW does know how many members are women. But as they play a growing role in the nation’s military, the organization expects to see more posts started by women and more women playing leadership roles, Newberry says.

“We faced the same challenge with our time when we came back from Vietnam. It’s history repeating itself,” Newberry says.

nding out in a crowd. The former Army reservist joined the Veterans of Foreign Wars in 1991 shortly after returning from a deployment in the Middle East during the Gulf War. She quickly found that attracting fellow female military veterans to the male-dominated VFW was no easy task.

As Roll rose through the VFW ranks, and post after post asked her for advice on attracting female members, she decided a different approach was needed.

“I thought the only way to bring them in was give them a post of their own,” says Roll, chief of staff for New York state’s VFW and female vets chairwoman for the national VFW.

So Roll organized what has become the nation’s only VFW post targeting the needs of women.

Men wear their military backgrounds literally on their sleeves — jackets or hats showing their veteran statuses, Roll says.

“Not in the female world. A lot of them didn’t even know they were veterans and eligible for the VFW,” says Roll, 46, of Alden, N.Y. “A lot of them shifted gears when they came back — ‘I’m a mom, I’m a businesswoman.”

The VFW has a membership of 1.6 million, with most typically being men ages 60 and up, says Jerry Newberry, VFW director of communications.

Most of the VFW’s 7,500 posts are filled with retired men, so “their needs and issues are a lot different than the new veteran of a foreign war,” says Renee DeRouche, 46, of Orchard Park, N.Y., and commander of VFW Post 12097.

“Our age range for our post is late 20s to mid-40s for the most part,” says DeRouche, who has spent 27 years full- and part-time in the U.S. Army, Army Reserves and National Guard, including time in the Middle East as part of Operation Desert Storm and Operation Iraqi Freedom. “Everybody’s still working. Some of them have little kids. So the needs become a little different.”

Thirty-four women and eight men were charter members of VFW Post 12097, launched last July. Today it has 49 members, 40 of them women.

Schreck joined the post after his wife, Leonora, who was injured in Iraq while in the Army, became interested in joining.

The post meets once a month in another VFW post’s hall in suburban Buffalo. Its aim, members say, is to serve both as a social setting for female and male veterans and as an advocate for their particular needs.

“A lot of female veterans coming out (of service) don’t realize they have access to the VA (Veterans Affairs Department),” says former Army reservist Debra Post, 48, of Holland, N.Y. “We provide the information for them and where to go.”

With post members young enough to still be deployed overseas, it hopes to provide support to family members left behind, DeRouche said.

The Buffalo post is the second one started by women. The first was founded in 1995 in Topeka by female National Guard members who served in the Persian Gulf during the Gulf War. The post is now defunct, but lasted about six years, says Darrell Bencken, former Kansas state quartermaster.

“I think people moved, they got out of the Guard, and and there just wasn’t enough to maintain it,” says Bencken, of Topeka. “But it lasted, it wasn’t a flash in the pan.”

As of January, 25,000 women were deployed supporting military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq. Since the U.S. went began Iraqi and Afghanistan operations, 260,000 women have been deployed in support of those operations, Lainez says.

The VFW does know how many members are women. But as they play a growing role in the nation’s military, the organization expects to see more posts started by women and more women playing leadership roles, Newberry says.

“We faced the same challenge with our time when we came back from Vietnam. It’s history repeating itself,” Newberry says.

March 2011 Associated Press Article

WEST SENECA, N.Y. (AP) - As one of the few female officers in New York's Veterans of Foreign Wars organization, Marlene Roll heard the questions all the time: Why don't more women join the VFW? How can we change that? As she set out to start the nation's first female VFW post, it turned out the answers had to do not only with gender, but generation.

"For years, it was really a loss for me as to what the issues were, why women weren't coming in," said Roll, a former sergeant in the Army Reserves who served in Desert Shield and Desert Storm before joining the VFW in 1991.

She found that women returning from war to juggle jobs, kids and continuing training aren't looking for a place to view their military service in the rear-view mirror, like the servicemen from past generations who make up the bulk of membership in the nation's oldest and largest combat veterans' organization.

And those "men's clubs" weren't necessarily the place for female discussions about current issues like breast cancer concerns from war-zone burn pits.

"I really hated the idea of putting the glass ceiling back in place by giving (women) their own post," said Roll, Erie County's Veterans Service Agency director. "But on the other hand, if they didn't have a place to go, they were never going to become members."

The Dorothy Kubik/Katherine Galloway Post 12097 in suburban Buffalo was created with the idea of anticipating and addressing female veterans' needs for things like health care, employment and education, though men have been included from the start.

Kubik in 1987 became the first female commander of a New York state veterans post. She'd been an Army private during WWII, decoding Japanese messages as part of the Signal Intelligence Service. Galloway was WWII nurse.

Before the post's monthly meeting on a recent Sunday afternoon, two little girls busied themselves with Hello Kitty coloring books and Barbie dolls at a folding table where a young boy did homework. Children are welcome at the meetings; child care is one of the challenges the members face.

"The guys that belong to the older posts, some of them have been out (of the military) for 40 years, 50 years, so their focus is on something totally different," said Renee DeRouche, the post's commander. Like some of the other members here, she's still on active duty, as a property book officer with the National Guard.

The post has about 50 members from every conflict going back to Korea. About two-thirds are women, with some of their husbands are among the men filling out the ranks. Without a building of its own, the fledgling post meets at West Seneca Post 8113, a single story hall with a bar, banquet rooms and an outdoor pavilion.

With a strong focus on family, its leaders say it's only a matter of time before more posts like theirs crop up, especially now that women account for 15 percent of the military—more than ever before—and as the military moves toward permitting women to serve fully in front-line combat unit.

The other big veterans group, the American Legion, has not seen any women-oriented posts open but women do command some posts and the number of female veterans joining the organization is growing, spokesman Craig Roberts said.

Nationally, the VFW launched a "She Serves" membership campaign in 2008, encouraging women to join the organization as a way to network and keep up with female veterans and their issues. It's also assigned a chairwoman to every state to be in contact with women veterans, Roll said. The chairwomen will meet at a Washington legislative conference this month to compare notes.

"We're trying to put forth a robust effort to recruit women," said Jerry Newberry, a spokesman for the VFW. "We recognize their service to our country. We recognize their talent, their skills, their knowledge."

The national organization does not keep track of the gender breakdown among its 1.6 million members, he said, but is mindful of the hesitation of some women to join. The VFW, open to veterans who have served in an overseas war zone, traces its roots to 1899, when it was created to advocate on behalf of veterans and foster camaraderie.

"Perception and tradition are tough things to change," Newberry said. "Certainly, there is probably a perception that it's a men's club of sorts and we're doing our best to break a tradition that previously existed for many, many years that women VFW members are few and far between."

As a longtime VFW member since the 1970s, Bob Clark has seen the shift away from membership in general, which only reinforces the perceptions.

"It's a culture shift," said Clark, who has 40 years of military service, including in Vietnam and Iraq. Among veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan, he said, "there's not a lot of joiners and participators now. They've also got a whole bunch of other things in their lives so they don't show up. So what you end up with is male-oriented VFWs that tend to have older members whose focus isn't current events."

He joined post 12097 with his wife, Sue, who returned from Iraq in May 2010, and in support of his daughter, who is serving in Afghanistan with the Army.

"This group, because it's women of a younger age, all who are combat veterans, have a much more current focus," Clark said. "They are socially conscious and they are interested in supporting each other and making sure that people have their medical needs and their psychological needs taken care of."

JoAnn Kelsch was drawn to the post as a way to reconnect with women and veterans after serving in the Air Force from 1985 to 2008.

"I really like the mission," she said while attending her first meeting. "I saw here there was awareness in wanting to make it right for women."

The biggest hurdle so far in the post's young existence is fundraising, a staple of the organization's mission that enables it to help veterans and other community organizations. Since launching last summer, the post has yet to hold a fundraiser because the time to organize and pull one off is in short supply among the membership. Roll and DeRouche hope volunteers come forward as auxiliary members to help out.

Meanwhile, the post's leaders continue to field questions about their group, but have heard of no imminent plans for other women-focused chapters.

"They're interested but they're waiting to see what happens," DeRouche said. "I think in the next year or two you're going to see more of it."

"There's no reason to go backwards," she said.

Copyright 2011 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed

VFW Post 12097 in Associated Press Article

Dec 29, 3:09 AM EST VFW seeks reform of image as old man's drinking club by reaching out to younger vets, women

By HEATHER HOLLINGSWORTH Associated Press

LEAVENWORTH, Kan. (AP) -- The Veterans of Foreign Wars' post in Leavenworth traditionally was dominated by aged ex-servicemen. But in recent years a revolution has occurred in the Kansas Army town, with a new young leadership transforming the post into a center providing support and entertainment for male and female veterans of all ages and conflicts.

It's a scene that the VFW, considered the nation's largest and most active organization advocating for military veterans, is burnishing as several hundred thousand of its mainstay members - World War II veterans - die each year.

"We have to battle that perception that we are an old man's club," said Lynn W. Rolf III, a 36-year-old Iraq war veteran and the commander of the Leavenworth post. "We have to transform ourselves or we won't survive."

Since its peak membership in 1992, the VFW's ranks have fallen from 2.17 million to 1.49 million nationwide. About 500,000 of its members are above the age of 80 while just about 100,000 are under the age of 39.

VFW membership director Matt Claussen predicts the organization's membership will bottom out at 1.3 million. He says diversification is key if the group is to maintain its clout in the fight for veterans' benefits and entitlements in Congress.

Claussen says the group must strive to repeat its success at Leavenworth, as well as at other progressive posts; the chapter at Fergus Falls, Minn., was last year run by a 28-year-old veteran, and a post near Buffalo, N.Y., has a primarily female membership.

Former servicewomen and younger vets are "going to be the base of the foundation of the organization," he said

Younger vets had struggled to be accepted by the old boys' crowd for decades.

John Barrett said the WWII vets at an Alabama post treated him with such disregard when he returned from Vietnam that he turned his back on the organization back in the 1970s.

"They said it wasn't a real war, that we just went over there and messed around, that we were nothing but a police action and we didn't see what they called 'real combat,'" Barrett said. "They called us 'baby killers,' and they didn't feel like we should even be in their organization."

When Rolf walked through the door at the Leavenworth post in 2007, he found a bunch of old-timers drinking at the bar.

Sure, they understood combat and all the things that are hard to explain to people who haven't been there.

But Rolf, who had been drinking too much and had been struggling with bad memories of the war in Iraq, said members seemed more focused on what kind of liquor to stock at the bar than with providing support for returning troops and their families.

"It was a tough atmosphere," Rolf said. "If it didn't affect the home itself, the post, they didn't want to hear it."

So Rolf enlisted his veteran friends, and they led what he describes as a "coup."

Now the post hosts parties for the children of deployed soldiers, has organized a motorcycle rally to raise money for the families of deploying troops, offers resume-writing classes for service members' spouses and provides babysitters during post functions. Members even mucked together to clean up the home of a soldier who was deployed when his house was inundated with floodwater.

Barrett, who rejoined the VFW in November, says there has been a sea change at the Leavenworth post.

"I like this," he said. "This is good because you come in here and you see younger vets and you see older vets, even some old, old veterans."

As the leader of the post at Leavenworth and district commander of 19 other posts in northeast Kansas, Rolf - whose favored tipple these days is Mountain Dew - has not only fronted efforts to modernize and diversify the organization. He also badgers local media for coverage, promotes the Leavenworth post through Facebook and, perhaps most revolutionary of all, has actively recruited female members.

Forty-seven-year-old Cathy Fields, one of three women to hold leadership positions at the post, says she feels accepted, although her family had trouble understanding her attraction to the organization at first.

"Our biggest fight, especially bringing in women, is the perception," Fields said. "My dad said, 'Why do you want to go down to the VFW and drink with a bunch of old men.'"

David W. Jones, an 85-year-old World War II veteran who was the Leavenworth post commander about 20 years ago, is happy about the influx of younger members. But he wonders how female vets balance their time, between their careers, families and the VFW.

"They've got their kids to take care of, they've got their families to take care of. Nowadays almost all women are working," Jones said. "It's not like when my wife and I were young. She stayed home and took care of four kids and made the pies for the pie suppers and things. Now, it's different."

Marlene Roll, who helped form the woman-focused post in the town of West Seneca, N.Y., near Buffalo, said some posts don't do much to make women feel welcome. She's heard the stories of women bringing their discharge papers in, only to be told to go to the Ladies Auxiliary.

"I think they like their little men's club," Roll said, "but that's not what the VFW is about."

VFW Post 12097 Featured in CHECKPOINT!

The November/ December 2010 issue of Checkpoint featured an article about VFW Post 12097. Be sure to click the article to go to the original PDF file. The article can be found on page 5!